Cause It's Witchcraft, Wicked Witchcraft
by Gevar
Summary: Michael is dreaming. Cordelia visits. Or not?


witchcraft | ˈwɪtʃkrɑːft |

noun _[mass noun]_

the practice of magic, especially black magic; the use of spells: _children and goods were believed to be vulnerable to the witchcraft of jealous neighbours_.

**• **(in a modern context) religious practice involving ritual, spells, and nature worship, usually within a pagan tradition.

He dreams. Of honey-dipped phantasies. Of preposterously Kafkaesque nightmares. All of it and nothing in between.

So much that there are times he cannot distinguish dreams from reality. Michael padlocked this secret, this shame, fastened with sliver Gleipnir-forged chains and throws keys into scarlet molten river.

Less his worshippers think he's a confused little boy, running around haphazardly with blinders on. Their souls peddled for an apocalyptic finale, helmed by a magnetic leader. Not a fool leading the congregation into a whimpering end.

The dream begins, as it does, as it always has. With a woman. Surprise, surprise—really, Michael Langdon dreams of a woman.

Her visage is that one he'd bound into the atoms of his body, into the particles of his being. She is a fossil of his boyhood past. The ghost that exists underneath his skin, forever chafing Michael in places he cannot scrub, scrape, claw away.

This is one of those sweet confections-for-dreams, Michael thinks. The woman is here.

In his dulcet of a dream, she always wears funeral black. Her pallid skin stands out against the paillette metallic meshwork embraided into her raven-winged chiffon dress.

In this feverish vivid delusion, she appears in blue, deep as midnight. Sparkling diamonds glimmer on the elaborated lace on her dress. The hollows of her ivory-smooth collarbone are an enticing sight beneath the fishnet neckline.

Of course, she runs her elegant fingers in his hair, tugging it ever so slightly. Even in his quaint imagination, his scalp tingles, and spine shivering under her tug.

That stare. Cognac-hued, so sly and shrieks 'come hither' in that tantalising siren's lilt, ensnaring him. Helplessly enamoured, wholly addicted. He truly applauds his mind for the realistic touch to that curve of full lips into a seductress' grin. Real, indistinguishable from real-life, Michael concedes.

All that tawny piercing gaze and eloquent green fingers raking his gilt-edged tresses, strips his conscience bare. Even if. Even then. Even when this—_she_ is a figment conjured up by his sleep-deprived mind.

She would never let her currant lips curl into a coquettish smile. Or her palm flatly pressed against his chest, soil-tipped fingertips crumpling his dress shirt. Not for him. Not for the man who slaughtered her witch-wards like the sacrificial lambs they are.

But the words slip out all the same. "Are you flesh or merely a mad man's dream?" Rasping wheeze moults into impoverished feathers.

He doesn't expect a reply. He never does. The Cordelia Goode of his dreams favours disregarding him as he is a supplicant unworthy of her attention, remaining tight-lipped and silent as a snarling Grecian statue. Always, always, only a fingernail stroking his fragile high cheekbone.

Her smile turns cut-glass. Her eyes flicker to his lips and she jerks his head backwards. Her spun-gold mane spills over her shoulders in wave-like curls, like a halo fashioned out of a thousand flaring suns, tickling his face. The faint hint of cherry-scented shampoo gloriously fills his lungs.

She leans close. So close. Too close, that her breath is deliriously hot against his jaw. She purrs, beguilingly saccharine and throaty, into the shell of his ear, "It's witchcraft."

It does not answer his question. Nor it is the one he seeks as a logical explanation. And yet, it is suffice, satiates his frazzled curiosity.

"Witchcraft," Michael says, testing the feel of the prosaic term on his tongue, beckoning aberrant thoughts. Oh, he has no defence against it—her, it, her—and its tendrils hooking into his mind, heart, and every bit of him—he's swallowed by the lust festering in the crevices of his now open wounds.

Michael burns, and he thinks the heat cannot be any crueller or far too intense than the flames licking misery-sodden souls into oblivion. He imagines it does, self-immolation appeals to his sense like a deliciously death-carved apple. "Wicked witchcraft," he hisses.

Cordelia Goode, the living, the Supreme, the one whose likeness is distorted and uncanny. Pilfers rational thoughts and peace, deflecting them into an infinite reflexion of her. Michael could not decide whether he wants to caress her, destroy her or abscond from her.

In his dreams, _caress her_ triumphs. Every bloody _fucking_ time. It is not amusing anymore. For the Supreme devours him from within; Michael already knows this, feels it humming through his veins. But the stale revelation is new once more, every time it skims across the surface of his thoughts. The realisation is ugly, the truth is starved for white lies and this wanton desire is impossible to stop.

Common sense—ha, like the half-human he is—lays abandoned in favour of the altar of bottomless desires and wretched longing. It doesn't do Michael any good. He's fallen. Faster, brighter than the First of the Fallen into the arms of an ethereal beauty like her.

It's strictly taboo, Michael knows, to even admit the thoughts swirling rapidly in a whirlpool of objectives and detachment. He wants this._ Yes indeed_, he wishes to croak, but doesn't.

The thought of turning pliant beneath her calloused palms, arouses the need, so entrenched in his lily-white marrows. Raising the hooved beats of his manic heart to the rhythms of dancing thunders, and the words die unspoken on the edge of his teeth, _proceed with what you're leading me to._

"Why are you doing this now?" Michael murmurs, voice lost to the judging shadows of gawking incorporeal demons tether to the netherworld. Sanity gliding away from him, like the black cape slipping from her shoulders, pooling on the floor. He thinks, he ought to be ashamed, what a disappointment he's shaping to be, to his Father—then he remembers, this is his dream, and Michael is king in this made-up world fashioned from his lucid moments.

"Because I can," she coos to the square-cut hinge of his jaw. Her hand deftly unhooks his belt such that she has practice, Michael shouldn't be surprised—jealousy still flares in his jaws. "Because I'm the _only_ one," Cordelia laughs, incandescent.

"Perfect," is all he says—all that he manages to choke out. His hands stumble clumsily trying to unfasten her zipper. In that instant, he's acutely aware how green he is, a child, a boy. He forges undaunted, tearing the zipper in frustration.

"Tell me why," she drawls, her voice silken, twinkling. Her eloquent fingers unbuttoning his shirt. Patient, controlled. She pops the buttons one by one, all the while, straddling his hips.

This witch's temptation is such an ancient pitch. His hands slide over her shoulders and onto her breasts, pinching, stroking crested flesh while her words fissuring to pandemonium. Michael presses his mouth against the lavender-scented dip of her porcelain shoulder. He croons how faultless she is, how exquisite and pleasurable and noble.

This is his one allowance, an indulgence, he wouldn't switch, trade even if it's just illogical, fantastical or both for anything. Not even for his victory against mankind, against her. _There is no other witch for me than you, _sits on the tip of his hungry, impatient tongue. "Make me," is what he says, catching her lips with his, ending the conversation at once.

Later, Michael remains flat on his back, still as a dead crow. Agonizing surprise twirls aimlessly in his chest, as he realises this is nothing but a dream. Dreams have endings, hardly with little bows tied neatly.

Ragged clothes and torn capes litter the floor like the aftermath of a hurricane's passing. She slips into the darkness, through billowy velvet curtains of his bedroom. He is alone, with fresh talon marks on winter-whitened skin, all raw and crimson. Lavender lingers on his neck, like a necklace of twilight kisses. His body aches as it has never do before.

He tells himself, this is a dream—_crazy _witchcraft. A dream that replayed itself one time too plenty. Though the voice inside his head, with that signature sibilant echo, says otherwise. Denial is thicker than the blood of covenant, for he cannot and will not fathom the implication.

The saneness of Michael Langdon is fraying at the seams, undone by Cordelia Goode.


End file.
